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Things I’m Loving Friday: Gipis Edition

Back in April I ran the Sole of the City 10k here in Baltimore and it was so much fun. I mean it wasn’t fun when I was running it and it felt like 100 degrees, but it was fun after I accomplished something I had never done before. Probably five minutes after we finished I got the itch to sign up for something else. And I’m not your typical, oh let me sign up for a few more 5ks and another 10k, no I jumped right to a 12 mile race. Why because it’s the Charles Street 12 and I spent 4 years of my life living on Charles Street. My direct supervisor (and very good friend) at work is moving in July and we decided to sign up together. It’s a good excuse for her to come back to Baltimore and it’s something fun to look forward to 🙂 About a month ago Alex printed out a Hal Higdon training plan for a half marathon. I marked it up with the week we would need to start and what we were supposed to do each week. Well fast forward to Monday and I realized our training was supposed to start. UHHH that was not happening. I looked and Tuesday we were supposed to run 3 miles, I got overwhelmed rather quickly and almost stopped before I even started.

So I enlisted the help of a friend who just ran her first half marathon. I figured she would have a good training plan and I could modify it or not use it if I didn’t like it. She told me she used an app called Gipis. I immediately searched it in the app store and downloaded it. Let me tell you it is so cool. It asked me a bunch of questions and at the end had a training plan just for me. The more I look and play around with the app the more I like it! It has different phases for each phase of the training: building up, general, main phase, and final phase.

So Wednesday started the building up phase. I was still nervous about the fact that I needed to run for 30 minutes, but a lot less intimidating than 3 miles. Hey I am starting out NICE AND SLOW. I am not trying to win the race, just trying to finish and feel good. When I clicked on today’s workout it brought me to a page to explain what it was going to be. I said I wanted to stick around a 12 minute mile to start out with so I could gradually build up my speed.

I was on the phone with my manager for 45 minutes before I left work and I realllllly contemplating just taking the bus home from work. Then I thought to myself, no I’ll just walk home, that way I still get some exercise. Then I was like NO JUST DO IT. So I put on my workout clothes, locked all my belongings in my desk, and headed out the door. I knew my house was about 2.5-3 miles away from work depending on how you go, so I headed out on a route along the water. Now I knew ahead of time that I suck at pacing myself. That is the biggest reason why I thought this app would be good for me. Throughout my run the app would tell me to slow down when I was going to fast and if I slowed down too much to go faster. It was really awesome, I needed the constant reinforcement to go at the right pace. I can see myself getting a lot of use out this app and it really helping my running. I am very out of shape so I didn’t think I would make it the entire 30 minutes. My feet started to bother me about 20 minutes in and I could feel a blister forming directly on the bottom of my foot, TMI? I don’t care. I had to stop, I mean I didn’t have to, but it’s what felt right. So I walked from there on out. Oh well, may on Friday I will run for a full 30 minutes.

I am really looking forward to this training schedule and am going to try everything in my power to do it correctly. I need to not get hurt and I need to be able to run the whole thing on September 5th. Lofty ideas, but that’s what I am all about. Oh and I also need a new pair of sneakers, it’s one of the many things on my list. I highly suggest anyone who is looking to train for a race or to just get better at running look into this app, it is seriously amazing!